Hands On with Lenovo’s Dual-Screen W700DS

By Nick Mokey January 7, 2009

Hands On with Lenovo

There are big notebooks, and there are big notebooks. Of these categories, Lenovo’s W700DS most definitely falls into the latter, but the second screen and extreme feature load would seem to justify the weight – for those who really need it.

I had a chance to try the stately behemoth at Lenovo’s recent Digital Experience press event, and while it’s quite a monster, Lenovo has done a respectable job implementing the innovative new dual-screen design too.

For starters, every corner of the notebook touts Lenovo’s characteristically refined built quality. The slide-out screen, which you might expect to feel flimsy, was smooth and sturdy as well. Though it doesn’t pivot much to reach the user’s preferred angle, it doesn’t need to either. Lenovo also matched the dot-pitch of the slider to the dot-pitch of the main screen, so that windows spanned across both don’t awkwardly vary in size.

The secondary screen does lack the brightness of the main screen, though. It appeared quite dim under the conditions I tested it with.

While Lenovo’s estimated $3,663 starting price could be called high but reasonable, that’s only the tip of the iceberg in terms of both price and performance. The quad-core version of the machine, specced up with Nvidia graphics, maxed out RAM, and other features could run into the $7,000 to $8,000 range. That’s a lot of laptop. We’re not entirely surprised that Lenovo is pushing it for industries for oil exploration – if you shell out for one, you had better be prepared to strike oil to pay for it.

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